Transference, Reading, and Discussion

This evening I watched part of a show about Nostradamus. As I wrinkled my nose in disgust at the tenuous interpretations advocates would wring from his opaque and obscure prose, it occurred to me that this is really just an extreme version of what takes place in all reading and discussions. The disciples of Nostradamus find the meanings they want to find in Nostradamus in much the same way that we see many different figures when we look up at the passing clouds in the sky. Moreover, they are able to be persuaded by Nostradamus and to find things in him because they already see him as a source of knowledge and wisdom before even reading him.

The point is that reading and persuasion seem to necessarily involve a dimension of transference. In vulger terms, transference is a phenomenon governing our relations to other persons and things that leads us to see them as containing some secret hidden treasure that we desire even where there is no evidence in words or deeds that provides evidence of this. Recall the way ardent Bush supporters talked about him during his presidency. Whatever Bush did, even when his actions and words appeared cruel or stupid, his supporters would say that he had good reasons for what he did (even though they couldn’t be fathomed) and that he was a good man in his heart. That’s the essence of transference: seeing the reasons as necessarily being there even where they are unknown, and seeing the intentions as being good and wise, even where they appear otherwise. Transference is this attribution of something in excess of the “appearance” that would render the appearance worthy and desireable. And, of course, negative transference would be the converse, where actions and deeds are perpetually attributed negative motives and a lack of good reason, despite how they might appear: “He bought my lunch but I know he’s really just trying to soften me up so I’ll let my guard down and he can stab me in my back!”

Read on!
Transference is a pervasive way in which we relate to the world. We see it in academics who have devoted their scholarship to a particular figure. In these cases there’s always a sort of operative distinction between the concrete and real text and the sublime “transferential text”. Regardless of what the concrete text might seem to clearly say, the axiom of the transferential text is that it answers all objections “a priori” and that it covers all the bases even where it seems to contain lacuna. This is why arguing with disciples of a particular philosopher can be so frustrating. They tend to operate at the level of the transferential text, not the concrete text. And the axiom of the transferential text is that it is never lacking or incomplete. We see it in the classroom as well. It is impossible for a student to learn if he doesn’t have any transference to the subject (ie, he doesn’t think the subject possesses what he lacks) or if he doesn’t have transference to the teacher. In the absence of this our minds just fuzz up and it sounds as if we’re being talked to in Greek.

The same is true of texts. There’s a really bizarre way in which we already have to believe in a thinker or a text before reading it to learn from it. When I first began reading Lacan I couldn’t make heads or tails of him. Nonetheless, I was able to learn from Lacan because I already had a transferential relationship with him that led me to see him as containing truth even though I didn’t know what that truth was. There are other philosophers, by contrast, that I am unable to learn frkm at all. It is not because they are particularly difficult, but rather that I don’t have any transference to them and therefore nothing they say “sticks”. It’s literally as if what I read by such philosophers falls out of my ear a moment after reading it. This can, of course, change when you encounter the same philosopher at a different point in life and your libidinal cathexes and desires have changed.

And finally, the same is true with discussions. If there is no transference between the participants in discussion it seems as if it is impossible for them to hear one another, for things to sink in or be processed, even though they are addressing to one another and responding to one another. I’ve often witnessed this on political blogs, especially since the division that took place among democrats following Obama’s appointments. Democrats split into those that support him and those enraged by his appointment of Rubanite economic advocates. Ever since the two sides have coded each other as enemies and seem constitutively unable to hear one another as a result. Each side sees the other side as empty of any truth and therefore are unable to hear one another (and as an aside, I do not think this is something to be deplored. There are real and fundamental differences here and one has to take sides. It’s simply false when people suggest that “we’re all fighting for the same thing” or that “we’re all on the same side”, just as it’s false to say all religions share the same values. Those that support Rubanite or neoliberal policies are not fighting for the same things I am, no matter how many excuses they might give for the necessity of pursuing these things).

What produces transference is always mysterious and can be wildly unrelated to the thing one transfers onto. It can be the presence of a mere signifier. It can be transference to some other person who is, in some way, associated to this thing. It can arise from some childhood trauma or joy that creates a passion for something. Who knows? The source of the transference, however, is never first in the thing to which we attach itself. When the atheist sets upon the believer, systematically destroying those beliefs, for example, he would do well to remember that it’s never just about the beliefs but that there’s a whole network of libidinal attachment to family, spouses, lovers, friends, rituals, festivals, etc, of which the beliefs are but the tip of the iceberg. Tenacious attachment to these beliefs might very well be, in many cases, tenacious attachment to these other libidinal investments.

I am not deploring the existence of transference or the role that love plays in our social relations. Besides, to do so would be futile as it seems largely inescapable and because love or transference is a condition for all learning. We can only learn from that which we love. Rather, being aware of transference allows me to attain a little bit of sanity. The philosopher in me, of course, is offended by transference. I would love it if rational and well constructed arguments could win the day and produce persuasion in both myself and others. But the phenomenon of transference dictates that these arguments can’t even be heard by the addressee unless some transference is already operative. Nothing an atheist says to a Christian funda,entalist is going to persuade them and vice versa because the addressee in either case does not see the speaker as containing that “secret treasure” that carries knowledge and truth.

If this helps me to retain a little sanity in an otherwise mad world, then this is because it councils me to step away from certain discussions and arguments because the “communicative conditions” are not present there for anything productive to take place. And knowing when to step away also helps me to “soldier on” or continue doing what I do as a function of my own transferences. And lest anyone wonder, this diary is not prompted by any discussions I’ve recently had but arose from reflections on my experience of blogging and online interaction in general. Rather than being demoralized that persuasion does not always take place, I instead recognize that the world is saturated with many different loves and that these loves carry people in many different directions… Often in directions contrary to my own. The best I can do is continue to speak and write and hope that in doing so I encounter those from whom I can learn and grow.

Like this:

Related

19 Responses to “Transference, Reading, and Discussion”

The essence of transference is necessarily folk spirituality, if I may be allowed to use this phrase, since it involves seeing things when they are unknown. But seeing things as good and wise, even if they appear otherwise is mere ideological, since ‘appear otherwise’ would draw in an element of rationality, a know-about-it, and hence people hooked on to this version of transference would sit happily on fundamentalist chairs. In this manner, the next line in your post behoves of ideology…

“Transference is this attribution of something in excess of the “appearance” that would render the appearance worthy and desirable.”

The question is: isn’t transference prejudiced, a jingoism for textuality, and all that it would contain. A sort of right-wing fundamentalism, even if the sources/origins for it are dependent on a presence of a signifier, or a traumatic presence, or what have you?

Transference isn’t identical to being ideologically blinkered, though certainly no ideology can be successful without producing transference. But transference is also the mechanism through which we discover truth, create, and is a condition of communication. It both impedes and enables discourses.

I guess then, if using the term transference in a traditional Freudian sense, it’s important to concentrate upon where the transferred emotional energy comes from, as this will clearly impact upon our relationship to that that to which it is transferred to, and thus I suppose, in this vein ‘family matters’.

Upon reflection I agree that our expectations of those whom we read will be guided by such emotional factors. Personally, I’ve always found Hume particularly avancular in tone, sidestepping, for example, the paternal resentment elicited by Plato and other Greek virtue ethicists., or Nietzsche’s sneerily provocative older cousin…..

Thank you. But a small doubt still persists, and I would appreciate if you clear it: If no ideology is successful without producing transference, and with what transference could potentially effectuate, ideology (the successful one at that) then, could possibly effectuate the same, create, discover, impede or enable discourses. I still seem to see this as a circle through which a tangential break-away is not conceivable. Why I say this is because it goes against ideology to do any such thing…..
Maybe, the comment is unarticulated, but, I hope to see your reflections on the same.
regards,
himanshu

I think that we need to rework transference in terms of more recent work on cognitive-biases/habits/affect, but that aside my sense of much of what happens here is that people who identify with minority/marginalized philosophical.theological positions see/encounter OOO as a way of gaining some author-ity/legitimacy for their own views, and so try to claim some status as being at the Deep Root (and with no sense of irony also as the cutting-edge) of the project all along. One of the many downsides of the intertubes is the rush to respond which does little for the kind of careful close reading that it takes to try and keep one’s pre-judices/project-ions in check.
I would be interested anyone’s thoughts on how Graham’s comment on the back and forth history/development of philosophical thinking/inquiry relates to OOO and correlationalism.
“it seems to be widely held that the struggle of opposite philosophical positions on one topic ends when one side is revealed permanently to be a reactionary view that will henceforth be abolished for all but reactionary thinkers. For example, it seems to be thought that substance is an idea that has been “overcome,” with the implication that from here on out, for centuries and millennia to come, anyone who defends individuals will automatically be a reactionary, while anyone who critiques them in favor of process and dynamism will automatically be a cutting-edge avant gardist, bravely blazing new trails for the future of thought”

Does your OOO then involve transference onto objects, insofar as you conceive (or, I read you as conceiving) objects as more than the sum of their relations? Does the argument for an object’s autonomy from its relations make the object more worthy and desirable to the onticologist? Maybe onticology’s the expression of an onticophilia.

Can it also be the case that when an interlocutor or author makes us involuntarily yawn, that this could be characterized as a refusal of cathexis on our part, which may also be informative?

A lack of transference between ourselves and some teacher, or some stranger, inasmuch as the impulse to cathect is subverted in the subject — I cannot allow myself to cathect with this object — strikes me as worthy of more consideration.

Q: What produces a lack of transference?

A: “He doesn’t think the subject possesses what he lacks.”

Q: And what conveys that impression to him? How does he come to that spontaneous aversion, apathy, indifference? Is it through reason?

I am curious about this.

Here are some things I notice about the lack of transference: First, “the addressee…does not see the speaker as containing that ‘secret treasure’ that carries knowledge and truth”. Second, this not-seeing is associated with the preservation of sanity. It could be said that the refusal of cathexis coincides with the projection of madness onto the communicative content of the object. Transference is aborted because rational love is impossible; the object does not speak the language of love.

I wasn’t asking about the existence of objects; I was asking about their conceivability by the philosopher. The opposing parties in OOO aren’t debating whether objects exist; they’re debating whether objects exist as the sum of their relationships or as other than the sum of their relationships. I think you say the latter, others the former. Each side has its arguments, but presumably there is no way to resolve the matter empirically. The debate is inherently endless. So if empirical verifiability doesn’t determine the side one ends up on, then it must be something else. Is this something else libidinal? Or is a component of it libidinal? It seems that one could say that there is no way for the two sides to hear one another, because they have libidinal investments in opposed readings (mutually exclusive concepts of objects). If it’s possible that libidinal investments condition one’s philosophical position, then I hope it can be asked why one would then have a libidinal investment in conceiving objects as more than the sum of their relations. Is it out of a pre-philosophical love for objects that one would conceive it as such? Or is it out of a pre-philosophical love for antecedent philosophers who first conceived objects that way?

[…] Bryant posted a great piece on textual transference and the role of love in learning. He has succeeded in making me wonder what it is exactly that gives ideas their alluring personalities. How is it that sympathy and charisma have such an effect in the world, while cold-hard facts and rationally deduced truth seem to fall on deaf ears? If an idea isn’t interesting enough for its teacher to sustain a relationship with a student, it will die a mere logical possibility lacking effective deployment in the relational world. […]

Sartre had an interesting line of thought somewhere that if I wish to expand my knowledge/understanding than I will have to decide what sources are worth engaging and I will have to judge whether or not the new info/experience has any value/substance. Of course we know a bit more now about our non-conscious predispositions/biases so the I is both more extended and kluged than perhaps Sartre imagined but if he is largely right that the evidence/facts don’t speak for themselves than what,if anything, does this mean for the idea/possibility of things speaking for themselves?

Lots of truth in this message, Levi. I have often found myself “disagreeing” with certain things shared on this blog, return to it regularly, perhaps due to the sense that I have had since “day one” that there is something “true” transpiring here (a kind of “transferential confidence”). What’s difficult is that we always only have so much access to the other. For example, the transferential relationship between teacher-student begins on the first day of class, and is often “made or broken” that day. So while, say, I could access plenty of your words, you could not access many of mine (just as an example). Obviously, it is easy to “give up” on an other if that “day one confidence” is not established (or even aggravated by miscommunications or, I admit, a will-to-disrupt). That said, my favorite philosophers– Jean-Luc Nancy to name just one– will probably be with me forever, simply because every new or old book of theirs I turn to seems to “shake us [me] to the most profound parts of ourselves,” i.e., to disrupt the sense I have of myself. If I’m no ontocoligist myself, I admit its simply because this philosophy doesn’t shake me in that way, the way I’m sure it shakes you and some others. Perhaps we’d say that there is an excess to the ontocologist which is trembling with sense beyond OOO itself.

I recently tweeted to Adam Kotsko a somewhat innocent message that I thought his jabs at OOO and the banter about his academic stardoom were “childish.” I had said so because, as I had read his translation of “The Sacrament of Language,” I had established that transferential confidence (perhaps I should have just left all that confidence to Agamben). Upon reading his quips there and some other reviews around the web, I was almost embarrassed. Perhaps my comment was an attempt to “jolt” that confidence back into play, but I just ended up offending him, which wasn’t my initial intent at all (honestly, I don’t think I had any “intent,” not even to defend you, Levi, which is my only tie; I think if I had any “intent” it was to express my disgust with how much time is wasted (including my own, obviously)). To him, and to hearken what I’ve said about “access” or “the availability of the other self,” I was just an inconsiderate stranger (and was interrogated on that level, a la “what makes you think you have the right??). Of course I was, in a sense– I really have no place to say such things.

I’m sharing this here because of the phenomenon of the “stranger’s speech”– especially when it aggravates us or “gets under their skin”– a kind of accidental or denied transference, maybe, where it is less a matter of “who says it” than it is of “our (unwanted, unforeseen) saying-it-to-ourselves (qua another’s mouth).” The offhandedness of my intent and the animation with which it was met– it just makes me wonder. While, when speaking, I try to go “full bore,” whenever I am aggravated or challenged in a way that “gets to me,” I try to take it as seriously as possible (this has happened each time in our interactions, Levi; perhaps I wish I were “up to snuff” and could say the reverse). Because if something really “gets to you,” then how can you deny there is something there to “be gotten”? Anyway, I’m not entirely sure if and how this question is related, but it seems to be. Best–

Recall the way ardent Bush supporters talked about him during his presidency. Whatever Bush did, even when his actions and words appeared cruel or stupid, his supporters would say that he had good reasons for what he did (even though they couldn’t be fathomed) and that he was a good man in his heart.

Recall the way Obama supporters have talked during his presidency. Whatever Obama did (or failed to do), even when his healthcare proposal was miserably defeated or after he brazenly capitulated to the Republicans’ economic demands, continued overseas interventions, and detainment facilities, his supporters have claimed that he had good reasons for doing it, or that he was too naive in seeking a compromise, or that he was simply too weak-willed. Some continue in the mistaken belief that the Democratic party is in any sense a viable political alternative to the Republicans.

I was reading Sloterdijk’s Critique of Cynical Reason and found a passage in the “transcendental polemic” section that is perhaps relevant here:

“If, with the primacy of the subject, the “agonistic theory” must necessarily arise, then, from a way of treating things that acknowledges the precedence of objects, something comes forth that may bear the name “erotic theory”… Artists and eroticists [and philosophers too?] live under the impression that the things want something from them rather than that they want something from the things, and that it is the things that entangle them in the adventure of experience. They go to the things, surrender themselves to their impression, and as true researchers, feel themselves under their spell.”

The idea that the potentiality of an object is not exhausted in the series of actualizations that constitutes it as a dynamic system is perhaps of the same theory family (the erotic) as the idea that within the beloved one sees some secret hidden treasure.

In any case, the idea of “transference” is perhaps a bit too much like Aristotle’s notion of metaphor, the “transport of an extraneous noun.” Deleuze’s notion (or his reading of Hume’s notion) of the “exteriority of relations to their terms” would seem to contain an implicit critique of Aristotle’s metaphor and Freud’s transference. At least insofar as the latter two posit the origin of the relation (linguistic or libidinal) in one of the terms. Transference seems to mean that X’s love for Y originates in X, that subject X is said to have invested libido in the object Y. This suggests a preponderance of the subject over the object. But the love between two people is much more like a slime mold than a financial decision. In a slime mold, no individual spore serves as the pacer cell that functions to signal when it’s time to fuse. The fusion is an emergent phenomenon that seems to interpellate its constituents all at once. Love is another such emergent phenomenon constitutive of a relation exterior to its terms. In any case, if love is like a metaphor, it’s not like an Aristotelean one. Probably Lacan’s understanding of metaphor is anti-Aristotelean, and therefore maybe his notion of transference too. I haven’t read the “Agency of the Letter” in a while.

[…] the point that our differences with Whitehead are not failures to understand him (cf. my post on transference), but because of genuine disagreements with Whitehead. For me, there are three basic points of […]